He smiled when he got the message from headquarters ordering him to the camp outside the Dome. Montford had been waiting for that, he had known it was coming. His decision to keep the precog had paid off - again.
He decided he had time to go back to his chateau one last time before he had to leave for the camp. He strode into his spacious bedroom after his shower in his equally spacious bathroom, and sprawled naked on his over-sized bed. He grinned up at himself in the mirrored ceiling over the bed.
The thought of starting a new “enterprise” excited him. He thought of all the antiques he’d have to sell and for his personal collections, and he was especially going to be on the look-out for a new female for his special collection.
He reached over and pushed the button that would summon the precog to his bedroom. In a few minutes, he heard her gentle tap at his door.
“Come,” he ordered.
She slipped into the room silently, wearing what she knew he’d want her to have on. A white tunic with nothing underneath. She stood at the foot of the bed, waiting. She could see his excitement and she felt nothing. Once, she had gone to his bed willingly.
But only once. After the first time, she had awakened here, after he beat her into unconsciousness, and she had never willingly gone to his bed again. For a while, she had been frightened, knowing each time what he always ended each session with, even more frightened when she had conceived after he had ignored her when she asked to go to a Healer to renew her fertility inhibitor, and he had been incensed until he realized that a child gave him more leverage over her.
After the second child, he brought his disgraced Healer in who took away her ability to ever conceive again, and she had thanked the Healer because she’d had visions of what would happen to any future children, none of them good.
After that, when he ordered her to his bed, she was just disgusted. Now she felt nothing.
She knew he would want another reading tonight. Maybe she would have a vision. Maybe not. And even if she did, it may not be to his liking. She had tried to explain precognition to him once, about how there was always more than one way for a future to go and how it was hard to do an individual reading unless that individual had a specific role that affected the entire society but he insisted she give him readings all the time anyway.
He was confident that he was going to, indeed, affect the entire society. She never told him the truth - that he wouldn’t. Not really. What he was doing, was going to do, would only be a minor blip without much consequence. She knew better than to tell him that, though. She had seen that strand, and while she could accept her own death, she would not allow him to destroy her children.
She had learned long ago that his psyscan esa wasn’t nearly as strong as he supposed and there were ways to prevent him from reading the exact truth, and just as it didn’t work on her, his pain/pleasure esa didn’t work on her children either. She knew he’d tried it on them because of how angry he’d gotten with her when it hadn’t worked, so he made other threats towards them that she knew he’d carry out if she didn’t comply with his wishes.
Subsequently, she’d learned to be expert at lying to him. Tonight, she was going to lie to him. She had lied to him before, such as when he had tortured her badly and she had told him about the opening of the Dim Spot. Then, when she’d seen the consequences of him getting his hands on it first, she had misdirected him about the timing of the opening of the Spot.
She’d withheld information before too. Her second child was not his but she had known better than to allow him to know that. He would have destroyed her children and the father of her second child.
She had Seen what was coming but she wasn’t going to tell him what she’d Seen. She knew the man was insane, had been insane for quite some time, and had started to unravel lately. She Saw how much more he would unravel in the near future. It was almost over. To tell him would change it.
She had Seen all of the possibilities and the only one she was interested in seeing come to pass was the one where her children survived. So she was going to lie, giving him the story he wanted to hear. He would never know she’d lied - until it was too late.
He crooked his finger at her, smiling when she started crawling onto the bed.